Nielsen Folds Hispanic People Meter

NEW YORK, August 27: The Nielsen Company has announced that
beginning today, it will produce all national ratings for Spanish-language
television through its National People Meter (NPM) panel, the same sample that
it uses to produce ratings for English-language networks.

With the move to a single national sample, all U.S. networks
will now have a common ratings number regardless of language. As a result,
Nielsen will now retire its separate National Hispanic People Meter (NHPM)
panel, which has measured Hispanic households since 1992. This completes a
transition that started in late 2005, when a number of Spanish-language
networks began to use ratings data from the NPM sample.

Nielsen's move also comes on the heels of a significant
ongoing expansion of its National People Meter sample. Today, the sub-sample of
Hispanic households within the NPM panel is both larger and more representative
of the U.S. Hispanic population than the 1,000-home National Hispanic People
Meter panel that is being retired.

The decision also reflects the significant growth in
Hispanic television in the U.S. in recent years. For example, the number of
Hispanic viewers in the U.S. has risen from 22.2 million, or 9 percent of the
total U.S. population in 1992-1993, to 38.9 million, or 14 percent of the total
population in 2005-06. Ad spending on Spanish-language network and cable
television has grown from approximately $1.8 billion in 2001 to more than $3.05
billion in 2006, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus. In the 1992-1993 television
season, there were two national Spanish-language broadcast networks, attracting
a combined average prime-time audience of 2.4 million Hispanic viewers. In the
2006-2007 television season, there were four national Spanish-language
broadcast networks with a combined average prime-time audience of 4.1 million
Hispanic viewers.

“By providing the marketplace with a single source of
television ratings regardless of language, Nielsen will allow the television
industry to evaluate both English and Spanish language television and audiences
side-by-side,” said Sara Erichson, the executive VP of Nielsen Media Research
North America. “This step is part of Nielsen's commitment to continuously
improve the quality and accuracy of its measurement and to ensure that our
measurements reflect the growing diversity of the entire U.S. population.”